Board or table games are well known. Some of the more famous brands are household names, including the games MONOPOLY, RISK, CLUE, SORRY, BATTLESHIP and STRATEGO, all owned by Hasbro. Each of these games has provided fun and excitement for many years, and in some cases, several generations. New games are constantly being developed with the desire and hope of duplicating the popularity of the abovementioned classical games.
Several board games have been patented in the past. For example, a 1997 U.S. Pat. No. 5,683,087, issued to Henshaw et al., for “Apparatus And Method For Playing A Game” purports to disclose a game with a playing board having marked spaces along with game pieces to be moved based on the throw of a die where the object is to assemble a miniature house piece by piece, including a ground slab, walls, a ceiling and a chimney. The first player to build an entire structure wins. A Patent issued in 1998, U.S. Pat. No. 5,722,658 to Talmage et al., for a “Safety Board Game” purports to disclose a board game for teaching industrial safety rules based on moving playing pieces after successfully answering question cards. The following year, U.S. Pat. No. 5,951,010 issued to Ordinas for a “Table Game” with a board shaped like a truncated pyramid in the style of a Babylonian or ziggurat temple. The board is provided with steps of diminishing size indicating more difficult questions. The first player reaching the top wins. Another U.S. Pat. No. 6,446,968, issued to Koch for a “Themed Board Game” purports to disclose a board game depicting a number of locations and two identical sets of cards in which players vie with each other to solve a multi-part mystery by deducing which cards, randomly selected at the start, have no match. Another U.S. Pat. No. 7,219,894, issued to Stewart et al., relates to a board game in which players move pawns on a board and attempt to collect indicia-bearing tokens or markers to attach to player wearable costume components.